A Sip of Water in the Silk Dunes: How Hadi Pourjahan Brings Ancient Traditions into Dialogue with Contemporary Art

 The Philosophy of Contrasts: Abangan and the Cry of Blue Silk

— Cultural magazines often write about carpets as craft, but your work looks like pure conceptual art. In Carpet of the Desert, muted, sandy tones are literally shattered by flashes of deep blue. Why is this visual contrast so dramatic in the Iranian context?

The history of Iran is a story of both struggle with drought and learning to live alongside it. In our land, water has never been merely a natural resource or an item on a utility bill. Water is a sacred element. It is synonymous with hope, continuity between generations and, quite literally, survival.

The Iranian calendar includes an ancient pre-Islamic festival, Abangan, dedicated to the veneration of water. It was the starting point for my work. The desert in the carpet is a metaphor for Iran itself: harsh and scorched by the sun, yet concealing extraordinary life within. The blue silk threads cutting across the weave are more than a splash of colour. They are a sip of water amid endless sands. They are a manifesto on fragility: let the water disappear, and the desert will swallow everything.

— But why a carpet? Today, artists are more likely to turn to installations, digital art or performance.

Because the carpet is part of our cultural DNA. Its knots hold the inherited memory of the Iranian people. For me, a handmade carpet ceased long ago to be merely a decorative object laid on the floor or hung on a wall to make a room feel cosy. It is a medium. It is a canvas through which I can communicate ideas that are thoroughly of our time without severing my connection with my roots. When viewers touch a carpet, they touch eternity, yet encounter meanings that speak to the present day.

Тұскиіз: The Art of Keeping Memories AliveNatalya Krivets is a textile artist, art historian and collector of vintage Central Asian textiles. Her main interest lies in Kazakh tұskiiz - embroidered wall panels that combine artistic craftsmanship, family history and the memory of generations. While building her collection, Natalya studies not only the composition and embroidery technique but also the lives of the women who created these works.mag.humodoc.com

The Magic of Abrash: Defying Convention and Making Silk Breathe 

— Designers often complain that the conservatism of weavers and the technical limitations of production can “kill” their bold designs. What compromises did you have to make while creating Carpet of the Desert?

None at all. I categorically reject the idea that carpet weaving is constrained by technical limitations. My secret is that I am not simply a “sketch artist” who hands a sheet of paper to a factory and waits for the finished product. For many years, I worked as a professional restorer of antique, priceless silk carpets from Qom. I know their anatomy down to the very last knot. I know how the thread behaves, how it stretches and how it absorbs pigment.

At Parseh Qom, I oversee everything, from the first charcoal sketch to the dyeing of the yarn. And this is where things get interesting. Industrial carpets have accustomed us to perfectly uniform, lifeless colours. I, on the other hand, use the ancient technique of abrash: deliberate, carefully controlled irregularity in the dyeing of the threads. In my carpets, colour vibrates, flowing gently from one shade into another. It breathes. Perfect smoothness is actually boring. It is the domain of robots. My carpet changes depending on how the sunlight falls on it, just like real sand dunes.

Who Stands Behind Each Knot: Authorship and Invisible Hands

— Each carpet like this contains hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of knots tied by hand. How do the ego of the artist as a creator and the hard, repetitive labour of the individual weaver coexist in your work?

Carpet of the Desert exists as a one-of-a-kind piece. I deliberately avoid copies and repetitions: every work should have a soul. The buyer receives more than just a carpet. They receive an art passport, a certificate of authenticity documenting its entire history.

As for the weavers, you have touched on a very important subject. A carpet is a collaborative creation. Yes, I develop the concept and determine its colours and philosophy. But the artisans who spend day after day tying threads at the loom are just as essential to its story. The names of the people who wove The Desert Carpet are permanently recorded in its technical documentation. We have no right to erase the names of those who, quite literally, gave the artist's idea physical form. Without them, the concept would have remained nothing more than a drawing in my notebook. That is how we work together.

Art Without an Interpreter: How the West Sees the East

— Your work is steeped in distinctly Iranian motifs: the Abangan festival, the philosophy of the desert and the traditions of Qom. Do international audiences understand this message, or do they simply see a “beautiful Oriental carpet”?

Good art must speak a universal visual language even before viewers read the explanatory text on a gallery wall. The texture of silk, the depth of colour and the magic of composition all speak directly to people's emotions, wherever they are in the world.

Of course, when I give a brief historical introduction and talk about the cult of water and Abangan, a "second eye" opens for the viewer: they begin to see the context. Some perceive an environmental manifesto against global warming; others see a personal drama of loneliness.

And this, perhaps, is the greatest power of art: it does not dictate ready-made meanings, but invites everyone to discover their own. The silk thread becomes a link between the artwork and its viewer, allowing each person to find something personal in it.

— Hadi, one last question. If your Carpet of the Desert could speak to someone who sees it two hundred years from now, what is the one message it should convey?

It would say: "Take care of water. And never forget who you are." You know, civilisations are born and perish, cities are buried beneath the sand, but as long as people can turn a rough thread into poetry, there is still hope for this world. I want this carpet, two centuries from now, to remind people that true beauty is born at the meeting point of extraordinary patience and absolute dedication to one's craft. And that even in the driest of deserts, it is always possible to find your own sip of life-giving water.